Redding v. State

• Decision Date: 27 January 2020
• Docket Number: S19A1302
• Citation: 838 S.E.2d 282,307 Ga. 722
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: REDDING v. The STATE.

307 Ga. 722

838 S.E.2d 282

REDDING

v.The STATE.

S19A1302

Supreme Court of Georgia.

Decided: January 27, 2020

Zell & Zell, Rodney S. Zell, for appellant.

Sherry Boston, District Attorney, Emily K. Richardson, Deborah D. Wellborn, Vincent J. Faucette, Assistant District Attorneys; Christopher M. Carr, Attorney General, Patricia B. Attaway Burton, Deputy Attorney General, Paula K. Smith, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Matthew B. Crowder, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Nahmias, Presiding Justice.

Appellant Kerri Redding was convicted of malice murder and other crimes in connection with the shooting death of Christopher Kenyatta. Appellant contends that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to raise the possible biases of two witnesses and by failing to object to certain testimony from the lead detective. Appellant also claims that the trial court erred by not allowing him to impeach an out-of-court declarant with a certified copy of the declarant’s conviction. We see no reversible error, so we affirm.¹

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. In the spring of 2016, Kenyatta lived in an apartment with his girlfriend Michelle Alamonord. Appellant and his friend Christopher Gaskins often stayed in an apartment next door. Kenyatta and Appellant were friends, although they began getting into arguments as summer approached.

The first argument arose when Appellant refused to pay Kenyatta $20 that Appellant owed him. Kenyatta asked Appellant for the money on several occasions, which angered Appellant. In early June, Appellant and Kenyatta argued again after Kenyatta drank two of Appellant’s beers, but refused to pay Appellant for the entire six-pack. Appellant became so mad that he threatened to get his gun.² That night, Appellant told Derek White, a drug dealer who also lived in the apartment complex, that Kenyatta planned to rob and beat up White. According to Alamonord, Appellant and Kenyatta had actually planned to rob and beat up White together, and Appellant told White that Kenyatta alone made the plan to get back at Kenyatta after their argument about the beer.

A few days before the murder, Appellant told Alamonord that Kenyatta had cheated on her. Appellant also said, "F* *k Chris [Kenyatta], I don’t like him." Alamonord asked Kenyatta about his cheating, and he responded, "I know exactly who told you that." Two days later, Kenyatta confronted Appellant; they argued and Kenyatta told Appellant, "if you want to fight, we can fight or else since you have that little gun, you can go ahead and use it."

On the night of July 5-6, 2016, Kenyatta was hanging out with his friend Justin King, Appellant, Gaskins, and a few other people at the apartment where Appellant and Gaskins stayed. According to King, around 2:30 or 2:45 a.m., Kenyatta told King, Appellant, and Gaskins that he was going to the store to buy some cigarettes and snacks, and King asked Kenyatta to buy him some chips and a drink; King gave Kenyatta his credit card and Kenyatta left; and Appellant and Gaskins left the apartment five to ten minutes later.

Around 8:00 a.m., a police officer responded to a 911 call reporting a body lying on a trail through the woods between the apartment complex and a nearby convenience store. The officer found Kenyatta, who had died from multiple gunshot wounds

, lying face up on the trail. He had King’s credit card, and a bag that contained chips and a drink was beside him on the ground.

That night, Appellant and Gaskins went to Gaskins’s sister Shannon Johnson’s house, where they also sometimes stayed. Appellant smirked as he told Johnson that "it was messed up how they did [Kenyatta]." The next morning, Appellant left Johnson’s house; he did not take with him most of the belongings that he usually kept at the house, and Gaskins and Johnson did not see Appellant after that.

Detectives interviewed Gaskins on July 17, December 11, December 16, and December 20, 2016. During the first three interviews, Gaskins said that Kenyatta left Gaskins and Appellant’s apartment in the early morning hours on July 6; that Appellant, Gaskins, and Gaskins’s girlfriend also left; that Gaskins’s girlfriend gave Appellant a ride to his grandmother’s apartment, which was in the same complex; and that the girlfriend then dropped off Gaskins at Johnson’s house. Gaskins’s final interview on December 20 was audio recorded and later played for the jury; during that interview, Gaskins admitted that Appellant had returned to their apartment sometime later on the morning of the shooting and told Gaskins that Appellant got into a struggle with Kenyatta "in the cut" and shot him.³ After the interview, the police charged Gaskins with making false statements. Later that day, police obtained an arrest warrant for Appellant, and three days later, he was arrested at an apartment complex in Auburn, Alabama.

At trial, Gaskins recanted his December 20 statement and claimed that the story he told in his first three interviews was true. Johnson also testified for the State; she said that at some point after Kenyatta’s murder, Gaskins told her that Appellant killed Kenyatta. Gaskins also told her that blood got on Appellant’s clothing when Kenyatta was shot.⁴ In addition, a friend of Johnson testified that Johnson told her that Appellant and Gaskins came to Johnson’s house shortly after the shooting and that their clothes were bloody. According to the friend, either Johnson, Appellant, or Gaskins disposed of the bloody clothes.⁵

The medical examiner who performed Kenyatta’s autopsy testified that Kenyatta was shot five times — once each in the hand, chest, abdomen, back, and neck. The medical examiner removed four .22-caliber bullets from Kenyatta’s body and testified that the location of the bullet wound

on Kenyatta’s hand was consistent with his defending himself against an attack. A firearms examiner testified that all four bullets were fired from the same .22-caliber gun and explained that various kinds of .22-caliber guns could have fired the bullets, including a Mossburg .22 rifle, a Savage .22 Magnum rifle, a Rome .22 revolver, or a North American Arms .22 Magnum revolver. Because there were no shell casings at the scene of the crime and revolvers do not eject casings, detectives concluded that the gun was most likely either a Rome or a North American Arms revolver. The State presented evidence that in September 2015, Clayton County sheriff’s officers confiscated a North American Arms .22 Magnum revolver from Appellant during a traffic stop. The gun was returned to Appellant in April 2016, about three months before Kenyatta’s murder.

Appellant did not testify. His defense theory was that the apartment complex and trail where Kenyatta was shot were in a high-crime area and that someone else shot him. To support that theory, Appellant pointed to a tip to investigators from a woman who lived near the trail; the woman said that she heard gunshots and female voices around the time Kenyatta was killed. Appellant also argued that White, after learning from Appellant that Kenyatta planned to rob him, could have killed Kenyatta.

Appellant does not challenge the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions. Nevertheless, in accordance with this Court’s practice in murder cases, we have reviewed the record and conclude that, when viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence presented at trial and summarized above was sufficient to authorize a rational jury to find Appellant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted. See Jackson v. Virginia , 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S.Ct. 2781, 61 L.Ed.2d 560 (1979). See also Green v. State , 304 Ga. 385, 387-388, 818 S.E.2d 535 (2018) (" ‘It is the role of the jury to resolve conflicts in the evidence and to determine the credibility of witnesses, and the resolution of such conflicts adversely to the defendant does not render the evidence insufficient.’ " (citation omitted)).

2. Appellant contends that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance in two ways. To prevail on these claims, Appellant must prove both that his counsel’s performance was professionally deficient and that he was prejudiced as a result. See Strickland v. Washington , 466 U.S. 668, 687, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). To establish deficient performance, Appellant must show that counsel performed his duties in an objectively unreasonable way, considering all the circumstances and in the light of prevailing professional norms. See id. at 687-690, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

This is no easy showing, as the law recognizes a "strong presumption" that counsel performed reasonably, and Appellant bears the burden of overcoming this presumption. To carry this burden, he must show that no reasonable lawyer would have done what his lawyer did, or would have failed to do what his lawyer did not. In particular, "decisions regarding trial tactics and strategy may form the basis for an ineffectiveness claim only if they were so patently unreasonable that no competent attorney would have followed such a course."

Brown v. State , 302 Ga. 454, 457, 807 S.E.2d 369 (2017) (citations omitted). To prove prejudice, Appellant must demonstrate a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s deficiency, the result of the trial would have been different. See Strickland , 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. We need not address both parts of the Strickland test if Appellant makes an insufficient showing on one. See id. at 697, 104 S.Ct. 2052.

(a) Appellant first claims that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to adequately cross-examine King and Gaskins about their possible biases in testifying for the State. Appellant argues that his counsel should have questioned those two witnesses about the possible prison sentences they were facing in connection with criminal charges brought before they testified. But Appellant...